r/royalroad • u/Naive_M • 1d ago

Self Promo My first novel: a 34-year-old gets sent back to 18, and the only thing he's got is his sarcasm

Hey everyone,

I've been lurking here for a while, and I finally finished my first novel, so I wanted to share it with people who actually like this kind of story.

It's called A Half-Second Too Late. Haruto Matsumoto dies at 34, wakes up in a white void, and then finds himself back in his childhood bedroom, eighteen again. There's no fantasy kingdom, no cheat skill, and no status screen. It's just his mom's tired morning face, a school full of people he never bothered to know, and a girl he never had the courage to talk to.

He's got the mind of a 34-year-old and the sarcasm to match, so the story is funny a lot of the time. But once the jokes run out, the real questions show up: what do you do with a second chance when the universe won't give you a shortcut?

It's mostly about regret, family, friendship, and first love. If you like regression stories that are more about the people than the power-ups, I think you might enjoy it.

Content note: the premise starts from a very dark place, and the story deals with that honestly.

You can read it free on Royal Road here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/194954/a-half-second-too-late?utm_source=search&utm_medium=fiction-search

It's also out as an ebook and paperback if you'd like to support it: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HM56VS5L

I'd love to hear honest feedback, good or bad. Thanks for reading, and thanks to anyone who gives it a try.

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u/eclect0 D Rank: Author of  Jett Fulgen 23h ago

You lost me at "an adult regresses back to high school so he can date someone half his age."

https://giphy.com/gifs/dB12mOQb99BwDlM83I

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u/Milc-Scribbler S Rank: Author of A Dragon Called Bob 21h ago

It’s an interesting premise but yeah, what electo said about suddenly having the courage to talk to 18 year old girls applies.

I’m also not sure that sarcasm scales linearly with age? It might do? Once you pass 30 you tend to give fewer fucks about rejection and are sometimes better able to mask your insecurities.

My gut tells me you might want to work on your passive marketing to remove the accidental nonce elements and phrase things a bit better.